Navigating global markets with technology
Ranked among the top firms worldwide, Clairfield International has developed a global network of top performing advisors, serving a diverse client pool of family businesses, multinational corporations and financial investors. Since its founding in 2004, the group has expanded across 30 countries globally, with 80% cross border execution. In the last 5 years, Clairfield International has closed over 750 deals worth a cumulative deal value of €33bn.
Choosing Gain as their go-to private market intelligence
“Gain allows for one database, centralizing key information into industry research reports, providing insights into the market, its players and previous M&A activity.”
Hans Buysse
Access to comprehensive industry reports
One of the primary reasons why Clairfield in Belgium procured Gain was for the in-depthindustry reports. Previously, their team of analysts would spend hours on market research –looking into sectors, companies and private equity firms. But with Gain, they could significantly reduce the amount of time spent on this task.
“The main reason we wanted to explore the platform further was because of the industry reports. Every week, Gain publishes an in-depth industry report, and these intelligence reports are very useful for multiple reasons. They summarize an industry which is always very helpful. They segment it so we have a nice categorization to help structure our ideas or our approach. The competitors listed help us learn of players that we would not have previously thought of or help us discover new ones.“
Alexander Vangoidsenhoven
Analyst, Clairfield International in Belgium
Our deep dive reports compile information and insights from reputable sources as well as interviews with c-level industry executives. This is so we can provide the most relevant information and data on topics including ESG ratings, market outlook and segmentation, just to name a few.
Since leveraging Gain’s market reports, Clairfield has been able to drastically cut down the time it takes to profile an industry and they have also gained much better visibility when mapping.
“In the private market space, Gain is unparalleled in providing the intelligence we need.”
Alexander Vangoidsenhoven
Another way in which Clairfield leverages Gain’s industry reports is to discover companies in their focus market as well as to find similar and adjacent players in other countries. Gain uses the power of generative AI to build these lists of similar and adjacent companies so they are accurate to the search query.
“On occasion, Gain is able to provide us with new companies in certain markets that were not previously on our radar.”
Hans Buysse
“When I need to quickly check a company, it only takes two seconds to look it up. It’s very nice to have a comprehensive and easy to use database for research. Gain centralizes everything and has a nice user interface for this.”
Alexander Vangoidsenhoven
Succinct business descriptions
Business model assessments
Cleaned financials
Market positioning
For Clairfield International in Belgium, a critical requirement when procuring a private market intelligence platform was that the information and data had to be accurate and reliable.
“That is something that is very important in our industry. We cannot be making accuracy mistakes. So having the ability to cross check data is very important.”
Alexander Vangoidsenhoven
When they found Gain, there was no question that our information was the highest quality on the market. To ensure our data is always to the highest standard, we take a 6-eye approach to reviewing our work, whereby 3 investment professionals validate the information prior to it reaching the platform. We also leverage advanced technology to ensure we have the latest metrics available.
As a part of their best practices, the Clairfield team in Belgium cross checks all of their information to always deliver accurate insights for their clients. Since implementing Gain, this process has gotten easier for them as we list all our sources.
“Gain always provides a nice section of sources which is something I find very comforting. It is good to know that what I’m looking at – what I’m analyzing – has been gathered and is supported by the relevant sources. I can then cross check that information again myself.”
Alexander Vangoidsenhoven
“On the research side, the impact from Gain is very sizable. The time it takes to do research has gone down tremendously. We are able to more easily cross check all our information and we're also able to delegate more interesting work to our interns – which I think they all appreciate. So, workflow-wise, it is very useful!”
Alexander Vangoidsenhoven
Delegating more interesting work to their interns has had a tremendous impact on the firm as a whole. Hans Buysse notes that “the team is able to spend more time digging deeper into a number of analyses which ultimately improves our scoring in the market.”
“We often have meetings with prospective clients or existing clients where we provide them with market insights that are specialized and deep that you would normally not be able to capture in the given time frame. But because we have such ease of access to information with, we have been complimented many times about how accurate our data is.”
Alexander Vangoidsenhoven
